


denouements, and other ways you ended

by mouseymightymarvellous



Category: Naruto
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fake Character Death, Kiri!Sakura, Naruto Rare Pair Bingo 2019, Nonbinary Character, Other, complicated Team 7 feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 17:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19404730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: Sakura succumbed to the waves, a bubblegum girl who barely understood she should have been scared for her life. The biggest tragedy of it all, probably, was the way that nothing changed that was not for the better.Sakura died and so Zabuza and Haku lived, and so Sasuke never left, and so Kiri and Konoha now have the chance to sue for peace.Sakura died, and—shivering in the rain and with the knowledge that she didn't matter enough—she took the blade stuck through her chest and twisted, ensuring that death took.





	denouements, and other ways you ended

**Author's Note:**

> A riff on this [art/meta](https://dimancheetoile.tumblr.com/post/185733394958/dimancheetoile-the-formerone-whispers-bro) by the wonderful mako.

Tsunade-bāchan didn’t even have to threaten him for Naruto to promise to behave; he’s an adult, and he knows what a slip-up in diplomacy could cost Konoha. He’s been training for this for years now, he isn’t a stupid kid yelling about how he’s going to be Hokage one day because at least then someone will love him anymore. Naruto is loved and he’s well on his way to becoming Hokage, even if Bāchan grumbles about how she isn’t old enough to retire quite yet, you unappreciative vulture.

Naruto is going to totally rock this diplomatic visit to Kiri. Not even Kiba and Sai taking increasingly more outrageous bets on which Kiri official Naruto will insult first (and how) from the large party of diplomats and associated guards in the Konoha delegation has unsettled him. Naruto isn’t going to insult anyone, and that will show them. He doesn’t need to hit them with a clever jutsu to prove his competency. He just has to do his job.

It’s significant that Naruto is second-in-command on this mission. It’s a sign of Tsunade-bāchan’s trust in him and one more step forward on the path that he’s walking.

He’s going to be the Hokage of Peace one day. Making a lasting pact with Kiri, now that they’ve finally opened their borders again, is as—if not more—important as their friendship with Suna. If nothing else, Gaara and Naruto will hold the Konoha-Suna alliance together with their own bare hands, and hopefully when they are dead and buried, it will have been enough to cement that friendship permanently. There’s no such bond with Kiri, there’s only over a century of mistrust and outright hostility. If the Great Elemental Nations are to stay at peace, they need at least one more nation committed to the endeavour, and rumour has it that Kiri might—however surprisingly—be agitating for something new, something other than war and unending senseless killing.

Sasuke sits down next to Naruto and hands him a bowl of whatever certainly terrible concoction the genin team accompanying them has put together. Naruto dutifully takes a sip of the broth, mindful of the kids watching him for his reaction.

“Mmm,” he hums exaggeratedly, and elbows Sasuke in the ribs when he snorts.

It’s good practice: Kiri isn’t exactly known for its culinary delights, and Naruto wouldn’t put it past them to try to unsettle the Konoha diplomats with their most unusual cultural offerings.

Regardless, Naruto has eaten a lot of terrible things over the course of his life, and probably too little of it was as a desperate last measure.

Later, when the fire is low and people are settling down to sleep, Naruto turns to Sasuke.

“Do you think she’d forgive us, for making peace with them?”

Sasuke blinks, frowns for a moment in confusion at the non-sequitur, and sighs.

Naruto just watches him, waiting for an answer, because he doesn’t know if she would, and the thought that he never knew Sakura well enough, that she never grew up to have an opinion on matters of war or peace, breaks his heart. (It breaks his heart more all the times he suddenly remembers her and all the questions he’d ask her ghost if he had the chance, and it has been months since he last thought of her and mourned the fact that they never even got the chance to bring her body back home.)

Sasuke frown deepens, and it’s only fourteen years of friendship that allow Naruto to see the shared grief in the lines on his forehead. “It doesn’t matter, if she’d forgive us,” Sasuke says, finally. “She’s dead.”

To anyone else it would sound impossibly cold, and even Naruto flinches. But Sasuke was there, too, that day on the bridge. He knows. Naruto knows he knows. Other than Kakashi-sensei, he’s the only person in the world who really does.

Sakura is fourteen years dead and when anyone bothers to remember her at all she is perpetually twelve years old, wearing a red dress and believing herself in love with a boy.

Sakura is fourteen years dead, and Naruto is going to Kiri to make peace with the man who killed her.

Haku perches on the edge of the futon and just watches her for a long moment as she sleeps.

The sun is only just starting to kiss the horizon, and the dawn traces soft purples along her cheekbone, the light still tired enough to turn her hair a quiet grey.

She looks so peaceful sleeping, her visible hand comfortably lax and her forehead untroubled. They’s loathe to wake her.

But she decided a long time ago, and then decided over and over and over again, the path she would walk, and even though there is a spark in them that wants to steal her away (they could do it again), Haku respects Sakura’s decisions and will put away their wish to never see her hurt to the side so that they can walk beside her, instead.

She’d hate them forever if they were to ever take her choice away.

Anyone else, maybe, she would forgive it of. But not Haku. They can only ever give her choices and respect what she decides. Anything else, from them, would be a betrayal of the foundations they have built together.

She knows exactly what it means to be here, home, today.

Haku will just have to trust, as they has trusted her for so long, that she has chosen and does not regret that choice.

“It’s time to wake, my love,” Haku says.

She comes awake all at once, with the long ease of practice, green eyes snapping open, green enough to take their breath away, still, after all these years, in the steadily growing light.

When she smiles, it is as if the sun has leapt from its sleepy repose on the horizon to gild her lips.

“Good morning,” Sakura murmurs.

Haku obliges the demand of her tilted chin and dips to press a soft kiss to her mouth, tasting the sunshine there.

“Kettle is boiling,” they tells her. “Come have tea, then I’ll help you dress.”

Sakura laughs, sharp and bright. “Thank you.”

Haku stays seated as she stands, and admires the cut of her collarbone and the strength in her arms as she stretches, sleep shirt shifting.

Sakura pulls on a robe and holds out a hand to help them up.

Haku takes it, and lets her pull them to standing, then directly into her arms.

They exhales loudly, curving their body down around hers, a little ashamed at their sudden weakness.

Sakura just hold them tightly, her arms pressing them to her and not letting go.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and smoothes a lingering kiss to their temple.

Haku takes a deep breath and then lets themself sink deeper into her, trying to will the stress from their body.

They knows. They trusts her. They trusts what they have built together, here in this nation they are helping rebuild and here in the quiet understanding between them, the close press of their bodies together, the bite of Sakura’s hipbone into their upper thigh and the heat of her hands on their back.

Distantly in the kitchen, the kettle is shouting, so Haku moves to pull back.

Sakura doesn’t let go, catching their gaze as they straightens.

“I love you,” she declares. “I choose you, just as you chose me.”

Haku blinks quickly, and tries to smile. “I know.”

Sakura’s eyes narrow before she nods decisively. “Now, let’s get ready to go steal some more justice for the world.”

“I thought I was the thief,” Haku says.

Sakura bounces onto her toes and kisses them viciously.

“I’m the killer,” she agrees, “but I did promise Mei no killing today.”

Haku laughs then, honest and almost bright. “There’s always tomorrow.”

“Mmm,” Sakura smiles, “and, for now, there’s tea.”

When Sakura is twelve years old, she crouches defensively with a blade in her hand that she’s never once in her life been made to use with intent.

This is what it means to be shinobi.

She’s twelve, too, when she dies for the first time.

Her body tumbles senselessly to the ground and no one weeps for her. Not until later. Not until she’s huddled as high up in the forest canopy as she can manage, back pressed against the trunk, her chest shattering with every muffled sob.

This is what it means to become a killer.

The boy from the fight takes off his mask and crouches on the end of her branch. “I will take you to them,” he tells her, “but only if you want to return.”

When Sakura is twelve years old, Haku offers her a blade, and she stabs it through her own heart.

Both Shikamaru and Ino had scowled furiously throughout the planning for this diplomatic trip. They just don’t know enough about Kiri; Konoha hasn’t managed to install any new operatives in the country since a few weeks before the Rebellion succeeded, their agents deposited kindly at Hi no Kuni border stations with their recent memories wiped, beyond the reach of even the Yamanaka.

Luckily for them, Team Kakashi excels at missions with bad intel. (If Naruto were the kind of person incapable of looking at the bright side of things, he might say instead that it’s rather the only type of missions Team Kakashi has ever gotten are those with bad intel, but he isn’t, so instead they are going to completely succeed here.)

Which is to say, when their guides finally lead them through the mists to meet the Kiri diplomatic party outside the village walls, Naruto doesn’t falter at the three people wearing complementary Mizukage robes nor the spiking killing intent that is suddenly seeping through Sasuke’s pores.

As suddenly as it appears, the killing intent stops, and Naruto gives thanks to all the gods for Hinata-chan and her Hyūga imperviousness to the Uchiha temper.

Situated in a loose grouping to the left of the heads of state, six shinobi smile terrible pointed smiles in Sasuke’s direction, their hands nowhere near their blades.

Naruto smiles brightly and pretends that he can’t taste the threat of a battle in the air.

He pretends he can’t hear Nara-san muttering insults against Uchihas and all their ancestors under his breath.

Wait—

Naruto isn’t twelve anymore. He knows his history, his own personal history and that of the world’s.

There should be seven terrible pointed smiles grinning in Sasuke’s direction.

Where is the seventh?

Haku straightens the shoulders of Sakura’s haori, smoothing down the fabric and ensuring that it sits just right.

“There,” they declares, “you look beautiful.”

Sakura takes a deep breath. “Thank you,” she says.

She’s talking about more than Haku helping her into her clothes, pulling her shirt over her head and strapping on her weapons and kneeling to slip her sandals onto her feet.

Haku trails a dusting of kisses along her cheekbone, mindful of the kohl they’s lined her eyes with and the lip stain turning her mouth bloody.

“I love you,” they says. “And I’ll never regret stealing you away, not if you don’t regret being stolen.”

Sakura’s hand comes up to trace the symbol she carved into the plate of her headband with the blade they gave her.

“There were many times I could have turned back,” she reminds them. “There was no other choice. Not for me.”

They smiles. It’s as sharp and violent and wanting, they thinks, as the way Sakura took that same blade and birthed herself into a new life.

There was always a choice. They will never stop being proud of Sakura for daring to choose herself.

The ghost of the girl who was once Haruno Sakura watches the man with the sword from the edge of the clearing they’re camped in.

“Come on, little cat,” he finally sighs. “Come in from the cold or die to it.”

The beautiful boy sighs. “No one here will hurt you,” he promises.

Sakura should know better, but she trusts his small smile.

There’s kindness shot straight through to his bones, this boy who could have killed her.

Sakura is helpless to do anything but turn her face to him like a flower to the sun.

She should know better. He is her enemy. A foreign and hostile rogue nin.

Except, well.

She isn’t Sakura anymore and she stopped being a shinobi of Konoha the moment ice senbon stole the breath from her and the only person to scream was the lost girl in her head who would have died for them.

She isn’t Sakura anymore.

She steps out of the trees and into the campfire light.

He’s never had a poker face, so Naruto doesn’t even pretend to try to hide his astonishment and appreciation as they are lead through the streets of Kirigakure.

Buildings appear out of the fog fully formed, rising like iridescent goliath and receding just as quickly. Everything is painted brightly, the water droplets hanging in the air working to turn the world into shimmering colour and light.

Naruto pretends to not notice the way the swordsmen are watching him. Pretends to not feel their considering gazes weighing him.

He has a feeling that they find him lacking, and he doesn’t know why.

It’s overwhelmingly strange, watching the Mizukage Council talk genially with Nara-san.

Naruto has no gauge for Terūmi Mei, but his experiences with both Momochi Zabuza and Hoshigake Kisami have been violent.

He doesn’t know what to make of any of these hard people who fought a rebellion and won, receding into the mists and leaving the other Elemental Nations to their conflicts.

Maybe it’s because it is Kiri and Naruto can’t help but think of her, even fourteen years and so much more and so many heavier griefs later, that the pink catches his eye.

Naruto’s head swings around, and a ghost steps out of the mist.

Haku wears Sakura’s kiss on their lips under their mask as they stands with the rest of the Mizukage guard.

Blond and leading the way can only be Naruto. And, always his shadow, Sasuke, stalking at one of the back edges of the Konoha party.

Haku fought a rebellion and won. They knows all too well that there is no burying the past forever. Eventually, it catches up with you, and debts of blood must be paid.

They handed Sakura a blade, once, and she claimed a sword for herself, later.

She knows just as well as them that your past always comes home one day.

In retrospect, Sakura cannot trace the path of love.

It is slow and it is hard and she fights for it tooth and nail, trying to carve something out of the spying and the killing that is hers and hers alone.

There’s no beginning or middle or end to it.

Sakura asks “are you a boy or a girl?” and Haku answers “I don’t quite know,” and well, Sakura doesn’t know who she is, either. Maybe that’s the middle.

Maybe the start is Haku watching her through their bangs on a branch, holding out a blade to her, hilt-first. Or maybe the start is how Sakura died and Team 7 was only proven painfully, unsurprisingly right. Or maybe the start was the first time Sakura kissed Haku with blood on her lips and victory in her veins, convinced that they might actually pull this off, this crazy, daring, hopeless revolution.

Sakura prays there is no end to it.

She’ll fight and steal and kill for this to not be the end of it.

“Sakura,” Naruto breathes out.

Of course she is here, his first and most terrible ghost. Of course she is here, the girl he loved but not enough to risk peace for.

Sakura cocks her head and leans her weight forward, resting on the hilt of the sword she has point down.

Her pink hair is shorn to the scalp and she has a vicious scar running down her neck into the meat of her shoulder and out of sight and her eyes are even more green than he remembers, when he thinks to remember her at all.

Naruto can’t breathe as he looks at this apparition in the mist, older than Sakura ever got the chance to be.

“Hello, Naruto,” says his ghost, and then she smiles with a mouth full of sharpened teeth.

Haku is a shinobi, is a tool in Zabuza’s hands.

They is a killer and a thief, and they helped steal a country back, once.

Nothing Haku has ever stolen has been quite as dangerous as the woman leaning her weight on Samehada.

From across the silence of two diplomatic parties, she catches their eye, and winks.

And oh, oh does they love her.

Konoha put a blade in her hand and gave her to a world that would have eaten her alive.

Haku held out a blade, and gave her a choice.

She has no regrets for who she chose to become.


End file.
